Proposals and acceptance
Some work should not start until the client has said yes. A proposal holds the whole engagement at the door, and their acceptance is what releases it.
An engagement sent as a proposal does not begin. The client sees what you are proposing, and nothing behind it runs — no document requests, no invoices, no reminders — until they accept.
That is the point of it. Chasing somebody for bank statements for work they have not agreed to is the kind of thing that loses a client before they were one.
What the client does
They open their portal, read the proposal, and choose Accept and get started. Where you have asked for a signature, signing IS the acceptance — there is no separate second step to remember.
What happens the moment they accept
Everything that was waiting is released at once, in one pass: the document checklist goes live, the reminder schedule starts counting, any stage set to fire on entry fires, and the job moves on to its first real stage.
Nothing about that is manual, and nothing needs you to be at your desk when it happens.
Accepting for them
Clients agree by phone, in a meeting, or in a reply to an email. You can record that yourself rather than making them go and click a button they have already said yes to.
Recording an acceptance releases the work exactly as if the client had clicked it — requests go out, invoices are raised. Do it when they have genuinely agreed, not to tidy up a list.
A proposal stage in a flow is how you build this into a template rather than deciding it job by job. See building a flow.